


safe (to love, to live)

by calico_fiction



Series: Calico's Aro/Ace Fics [8]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromantic Relationship, Asexual Character, Asexual Relationship, Autistic Character, Character Study, Comment Fic, F/F, F/M, Literal Sleeping Together, Multi, Mutual Pining, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Polyamory, Post-Canon, Queer Themes, Sexual Confusion, Unconventional Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:22:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25588204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calico_fiction/pseuds/calico_fiction
Summary: Ty Lee has a "crush" on Zuko because Zuko is safe to have a crush on because he's taken. Except the longer she maintains it the realer it gets.
Relationships: Mai/Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai/Ty Lee/Zuko, Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Ty Lee/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Calico's Aro/Ace Fics [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/835770
Comments: 3
Kudos: 105





	safe (to love, to live)

**Author's Note:**

> title inspired by the quote "A world where it is safe to love is a world where it is safe to live." -Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

At first Ty Lee has a "crush" on Zuko because Zuko is safe to have a crush on because he’s taken. Except the longer she maintains that "crush" the more it evolves into something... realer.

Ty Lee has always been someone who crosses boundaries - not as easily as she makes it look, but still - and she’s always been tactile. She’s been the same way with Zuko for their entire friendship, from childhood. She hugs him, kisses his cheeks, jumps on him from behind for a piggy back ride without warning because she knows he’ll catch her - and even if he doesn’t (he will) she knows how to land just fine anyway.

But she yearns, now, to hold his hand. To kiss his lips. His are always chapped, dry because he doesn’t moisturize like he should. To play with his hair. She’d braid it when it got long enough again, and maybe put flowers in if he let her. She wants to sit in his lap. To join him and Mai in bed together - them on either side of her, holding her between them, the three of their auras blending together as they share their breath and their dreams.

And then when she thinks of that, of the three of them, Ty Lee starts to think that way about Mai too. She’s closer to Mai than to Zuko, by virtue of time spent and a little bit more common ground. And it’s easier with Mai to cross those invisible, arbitrary lines because no one expects it to _mean_ anything. It’s okay for Ty Lee to tuck her face into Mai’s shoulder sometimes, or to loop her arm around Mai’s waist and pull her close. To steal little bites of her food, and to follow her into her bedroom.

She keeps it to herself, the realness (the way she does with everything else; the way she has to). It’s as if it isn’t even there, whatever it is, all throughout the war. not even Azula catches it (please Agni, Ty Lee thinks, don’t let Azula catch it - the way she does with everything else).

And Ty Lee thinks about it, after, considers just _saying_ it, breaking herself free from her silence the same way she broke free of her family when she ran away - suddenly, absolutely, as if it's painless. But she’s been so tightly closed up in her impenetrable (suffocating) fortress for so long that the sheer, dizzying potential of coming out feels exactly the same as her safety net on fire.

It’s Mai who brings it up, in a way, because Mai has never understood _feelings_ \- not normal ones and especially not romantic ones - and she’s always assumed that kind of stuff just comes naturally to Ty Lee. So she asks one day when they’re spending some quality companionable silence together, alone (blessed silence; no one told Mai that dating the sovereign leader of the nation would be such a constant headache).

She asks, “Should I break up with Zuko?”

_“What?”_ Ty Lee all but shrieks. “No way! You two are _so_ cute together.” And she means it. But she adds - quietly, gently (reluctantly), “Do you want to break up with him?”

“No,” Mai admits. She looks away and pretends that Ty Lee can’t see her either. “But I think I make him lonely or something.”

“What do you mean?” Ty Lee prompts. She tilts her head to show her curiosity, to invite Mai to share. (It doesn’t come naturally the way Mai assumes, but Ty Lee is still an expert through a wealth of deliberate effort.)

“I don’t know,” Mai says, frustrated. But Ty Lee is kind and patient and so Mai has the opportunity to think about it.

“He’s so...” she tries, eventually. “He’s so _much._ He loves me so much.”

“Well, do you love him back?” Ty Lee asks, like it’s that simple. She knows it isn’t, but everyone seems to think it’s supposed to be - and Ty Lee is very good at pretending to think what everyone else thinks. Sometimes she forgets she doesn’t really have to anymore.

Mai can only say, again, “I don’t know.”

“I could hang out with you guys more,” Ty Lee offers, selfishly. “If you think that would help.” Mai gives her a grateful microexpression, and that’s that.

So Ty Lee starts hanging out with Mai and Zuko, together, more. And her thing - the real thing - it gets bigger and stronger and she wants and wants. Mai and Zuko don’t seem to notice (and Ty Lee doesn’t quite notice either: the way Zuko lets his touch linger on her whenever he thinks he can get away with it, the way Mai gives her that special little smile that anyone would think was just for Zuko, the way the two of them watch after her every time she leaves them).

It’s on Mai and Zuko’s anniversary that it all clicks. Their anniversary is not the day they actually got together, or got back together, but a date that they chose together that has no particular associations for either of them so that the only thing that day is about is _them._ Except this year, Ty Lee is there too.

They’re in Zuko’s bedroom in the palace, the three of them, together, sitting on his bed and licking melted chocolate from a little fountain off of their fingers because all the orange-berries have already been eaten. And Zuko smiles, and he’s so pretty, and he leans forward and kisses away a smear of chocolate at the corner of Mai’s mouth. And then he looks down at Ty Lee where she’s sprawled out over his silk sheets in her pajamas and gives her the same smile - and then he looks... guilty.

“Oh!” Ty Lee exclaims then, because she gets it now - kind of, maybe - and she _hopes._

“You know,” she says, and she makes it sound like she’s sharing some interesting factoid that she maybe learned in the circus and has known ever since, all along, but actually she’s figuring it out as she goes. “There are people who date more than one person. Like, some people date all their friends because they all know they can trust each other, and plus then everyone’s emotional needs are met. Isn’t that _so_ cool?”

“Uh,” says Zuko, his lidded eye wide, his pale cheek flushed. “Yeah. Cool.”

“Is that true?” Mai asks, wry, amused, ready and willing to go along with anything Ty Lee suggests whether it's true or not. And there’s a little hint of sharpness in her eyes that tells Ty Lee that she knows what this is about. Ty Lee doesn’t know if he ever really was, but Zuko certainly hasn’t seemed lonely when she’s been around.

“Of course it’s true!” Ty Lee insists earnestly. She widens her eyes too, and pouts, just a little bit. It’s to make her look innocent. Zuko at least will believe it, even if Mai doesn’t.

“Don’t they get jealous?” Zuko asks hesitantly. He’s picking at the hem of his robe. He’s gotten chocolate in the embroidery.

“Sure, maybe,” Ty Lee says. She carefully tries to make eye contact even though she finds it distractingly unpleasant because it shows people that you mean what you're saying, until she realizes that Zuko is looking at her right earlobe. She looks at his mouth, not just with relief. Any second now, she might be allowed to kiss him. “But then they talk it out and so it’s okay.”

And Zuko has always been the slowest - the steadiest - out of the whole group of them, but he’s the bravest too.

He says, “Can I kiss you?”

Ty Lee throws herself into his arms and kisses him, and his lips are chapped.

“You really should moisturize,” she tells him, breathlessly, when they break apart. He laughs quietly, and kisses her again, and then looks to the side at Mai.

Mai is smiling too, and she leans forward and kisses Zuko too, and she hesitates but then she kisses Ty Lee too.

“I think I love you guys,” Ty Lee declares.

“I don’t hate you,” Mai agrees.

And Zuko just grins, and pulls them both in close, and they fall asleep all tangled up together and share their breath and their dreams.


End file.
